The public has long enjoyed the convenience of coin-operated or card-operated public telephones. These devices have made it possible for customers to place telephone calls when business or travel takes them out of their homes, or when their homes are not equipped with telephone sets.
The same is not true of videoconferencing terminals. Although there is a substantial demand for videoconferencing services, terminal equipment for this purpose has been, and remains today, concentrated in narrow markets.
In the 1960s and 1970s, AT&T PICIUREPHONE visual telephone service provided audiovisual communication between publicly accessible installations. However, this service was not widely, available, and was inconvenient to use, largely because it lacked a high level of automation. In the 1970s and 1980s, AT&T provided a PICTUREPHONE meeting service. This service suffered some of the same disadvantages as the earlier PICTUREPHONE service, and was not generally available to the public.
Currently, AT&T provides a standard teleconferencing service, intended mostly to serve businesses. This service overcomes many of the disadvantages of the earlier PICTUREPHONE services, but does not result in facilities that are available to the general public, and is beyond the economic reach of most individual consumers.
The advent of desktop video systems has made it possible for private individuals to participate in teleconferencing. However, private videoconferencing products and services call for service fees and an investment in equipment that substantially exceed the costs of ordinary telephone services. Thus, even the current generation of desktop video is not attractive to the consumer who would be only a casual or incidental user of teleconferencing services.
Thus, until now there has lacked a videoconferencing facility, generally available to the public, for making a two-way, audiovisual call between generally accessible locations at a modest, one-time cost.